Jamaica Pond/28 May 2020

I have been spending lots of time walking around Jamaica Pond in recent weeks. 

Growing up in Dorchester, one was identified by which local parish church one attended. That harkened back to a day when the churches were open and usually full. In Jamaica Plain, residents are identified by which way they walk around the Pond. I have, by habit, for no good reason, always walked to the right – counter clockwise. I cannot count how many times I headed in that direction pushing that big old triple carriage (which I recall weighed 50 pounds, empty), often with my father at my side, to provide my three daughters with some fresh air, since we all agreed that it made lots of sense for the girls to be outdoors as much as possible. Now, for reasons we all understand, we are all told to walk in the same direction to the left – clockwise. Believe it or not, one sees different things walking in that direction. I see Rogerson House, on whose Board I served for many decades. I see the old Children’s Museum, where we would often visit and my brother Vinny would find his way to Molly the Elephant (stuffed) in the corner. I even lived there briefly in what had been the carriage house from 1989-1992.

Back in the 1960’s when Mr. Fontaine, and later Mrs. Clarke, would drive us to school, we would look at those houses, especially in the morning when they were on the right-hand side when we were heading to BLS on the Jamaicaway. I think it is fair to say that in the 1960s, kids who grew up in two-deckers and three-deckers in Dorchester and Mattapan thought that the richest people in the world lived in some of those big houses along the Jamaicaway. I was also amazed at the houses at the very top of the Arborway overlooking the Arboretum, with those big staircases. I did not know that they had rear entrances on Hampstead Road. Certainly, it was a different world after one drove over the Casey Overpass.

I also saw a handmade sign on the side wall of the boat house. “We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sail.” I think that speaks volumes as to what is on all of our minds as spring becomes summer. There are many couples of various configurations, as is expected in Jamaica Plain, with a child and/or a dog who walk regularly. Some are not speaking English, which is accepted quite nicely in JP.  There are some single people, but mostly early in the day. Most are wearing masks; a few are not. Some jogging; some walking; some pushing carriages of some sort. I realize that these new rules are intended to keep us six feet apart, but it is difficult for dogs or children to understand rules. There are fishermen who tell me they are not faring very well, even though the Pond was stocked earlier in the spring. 

One wonders what it will be like when the weather really heats up. Not everyone in Jamaica Plain or Dorchester or most anyplace in Boston can retreat to air-conditioned splendor in the summertime. I expect those who can will continue to be indoors and those who cannot will probably get out and obey the rules as best they can. I wonder what it will be like when “school” is over and children will want to be/should be outdoors and how difficult it will be to get some of them to wear a mask. 

  I also note that when walking clockwise around the Pond that I see the Pond abuts Brookline – terra incognita.  Growing up, we always wondered why students at Brookline High School had a swimming pool and the rest of us did not, just as we wondered why we couldn’t swim in Hingham when we were on our way to Paragon Park, next door in Hull. Often these memories flashback, given that there is ample to think, as well as walk.

As David Brooks has recently written, people create a moral ecology that helps them solve the problems of the moment. Each of us has needed to make decisions as to how to interact with our neighbors and with people who we do not even know during this recent crisis.

To many of my contemporaries, 1968 – the year the Dream Died - may have been the year when all the rules changed. Certainly, they did on the Harvard campus, precipitously, almost as soon as we got back to school in the fall.  For our parents, December 7, 1941 served the same role. For others, September 11, 2001 is the day which changed their lives. Few questioned the intrusions into our freedom that occurred subsequently. To some extent, those intrusions have prepared us for the current intrusions and those we cannot anticipate in the immediate future.